Although Luke (Scott Patterson) and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) gave audiences perhaps one of the best on-screen TV romances, the relationship between the duo wasn’t originally in the script — in fact, Luke was initially meant to be played by a woman. Gasp.

“Luke was originally a female character,” creator Amy Sherman-Palladino told Entertainment Weekly. “[The network] came to me and said we need another guy, so I literally just took a character and changed the name, didn’t even change any of the dialogue because I’m that lazy.”

But when the plaid shirt-wearing diner owner, whose original name was Daisy, became Luke, an attraction bloomed between the two characters.

“We did a few shows and they just had chemistry,” said Sherman-Palladino. “It was the episode where they were in the market and Lorelai’s spying on Dean. Luke was there and they had this scene that didn’t mean anything.”

Graham added of the enviable relationship between the two, “It didn’t seem like, ‘Oh this is the definite love interest.’ It’s just this funny, weird chemistry that we had in terms of being complete opposites and also this built-in conflict of he has the thing she wants — which is coffee. But in those first couple years, I had a bunch of different dates. Jon Hamm was one of them. We had Max Medina. It could’ve gone in any number of ways. It was just something about the two of those characters together that they kept going back to and then it kept growing.”

Watch the full episode of EW Reunites: Gilmore Girlshere now on the new People/Entertainment Weekly Network (PEN). Go to PEOPLE.com/PEN, or download the PEN app on Apple TV, Roku Players, Amazon Fire TV, Xumo, Chromecast, iOS and Android devices.

Patterson, who will star in the upcoming revival as his beloved character, said of Luke and Lorelai: “You just never know about that kind of thing. You can get the two most talented people in the world together on screen, and for some reason, it just doesn’t work. I knew it from the moment we met, and I knew it was going to work on screen. We just had a rhythm.”